


Kiss of Death

by Calacious



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Child Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Minor Character Death, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 10:51:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3726040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calacious/pseuds/Calacious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander can't stop seeing her blood. It's everywhere, and he can't seem to make it stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kiss of Death

**Author's Note:**

> AU based on a prompt that I got from The Spinny Thing. Features Tony Harris, Angel, and Xander (Willow, Buffy and Giles also play a small part in the story). 
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of this work of fiction, and am not making a profit, monetary or otherwise, though the writing of it. 
> 
> Uses repetition and present tense. 
> 
> A/N: This has been months in the making, mainly because I kept starting and stopping, and second-guessing myself. I have finally worked up the courage to share it. I know it's not perfect, but I'm trying not to obsess. Please forgive any errors.
> 
> A/N2: AU Based on the following prompt from The Spinny Thing: Genre: Fluff; Type: Friendship; Age: Adults only; Warnings: Physical abuse ;Length: Any. This piece will feature Angel, Xander and Tony Harris.
> 
> Keywords: Lost, Mother, Snake, Murder, Rage, Books, Bottle, Holiday
> 
> Warning: This doesn't start off as even remotely fluffy, and features some graphic, gory details, and might be triggering for some as it does feature physical abuse and murder. It is for mature readers. The end is what I'd classify as 'fluffy'. Just a hint of pre-slash of the Xander/Angel variety.

Xander's lost. Not in the physical sense of the word.

He knows exactly where he is: sitting in the middle of the living room floor, staring at, but not really seeing, his mother's eyes, glassy in death.

Blood's seeped into the carpet, joined the other various stains to form one large, monstrous stain that surrounds Xander.

Flies buzz around his mother's head, come flying out of her mouth - half-open. He can trace a line of dried blood from the corner of her lips down to her jawline.

Xander draws in a deep breath, through his mouth, not his nose. He holds his mother's hand. It had been warm. Had clutched his hand tight enough to leave bruises - they're fading now - until she'd taken her last breath, and then died.

It isn't as dramatic as the movies, and TV shows make it seem.

Death, it isn't romantic.

It smells.

It's ugly.

Not at all what he'd imagined it would be like. Not that he'd imagined death all that often, at least not like this.

A violent, terrifying death, thanks to his extra-curricular, after-school activities fighting unseemly beasties and vampires, he'd imagined.

Him, Willow and Jesse, up late on a summer night, listening to the crickets chirp, wondering which would be easier - drowning, being hit by a car, or being shot.

Xander knows now, being shot, in the gut and the chest, is not the way that he wants to go when his time comes. It's a long, painful, drawn out death. And there's so much blood. It never stops coming, even when you're no longer breathing.

His mother had choked on her blood, toward the middle of the end. It had been painful to listen to, torture to watch, but Xander had forced himself to stay, forced himself to hold her hand, and smile, talk nonsense to her, read passages from the latest romance novel that she'd taken up.

It was a stupid book, with way too much sex (he didn't even want to think about it) but Xander had cried when he'd gotten to the end of it, hours after his mother had taken her last breath. Let the tears run down his cheeks, unchecked. They dried, made his face feel puffy and stretched too thin.

He has to pee, doesn't want to disturb his mother, though. Her hand is so small in his. Small and fragile. The skin so soft, has turned a bluish-grey.

"Boy!" Tony's voice startles him, makes Xander drop his mother's hand.

He feels the loss keenly. She's gone. His mother's gone, and his mouth is dry, his eyes feel like they're coated in sandpaper. His knees and back ache from kneeling, all night, in the middle of the living room floor, holding his mother's hand while she died.

Tony grips Xander's shoulder, wrenches it back, draws a gasp from him. "Get your sorry ass off the floor. You got school today, don't you?"

Xander shivers, his stomach roils, and he stands on wooden legs, wobbles slightly before taking off in the direction of the stairs. His father's clutching a bottle of whiskey in one hand, the other's planted against the wall, keeping the drunken man from falling on his ass. Xander can feel his mother's sightless eyes boring into his back, doesn't turn around when he hears his father's muttered curses, the sound of flesh striking flesh, the sound of something breaking.

He throws up, barely making it to the toilet. Loses yesterday's breakfast (a pop-tart) and lunch (half of Willow's sandwich, a handful of vegetables from Buffy's lunch, and a couple of chips that he snagged from some unwary student). Keeps spilling the contents of his stomach into the cool, porcelain bowl until there is nothing more left, and then his stomach seems intent upon divesting Xander of the very lining that houses it.

Finally, he stops, the muscles of his stomach seizing painfully. He kneels beside the toilet, his head resting against the lip, and waits for the spasms to subside. He needs to shower.

It takes him three tries before he's successful in rising to his feet, and then, he stands, swaying, looking down at his clothes. They're ruined. Stuck to his skin by his mother's drying blood. The shirt had been a Christmas gift from someone - Xander can't remember offhand. It doesn't matter now. He'll never wear it again.

He peels the blood-caked clothes off, like a snake shedding its skin. A sob catches in his throat, but he refuses to let it out. His father's still downstairs, but he might hear. Might come upstairs and give Xander something to really cry about.

Xander shudders, steps into the shower and turns the water on. It's cold, at first, makes him jump. Wakes him up. Reminds him of his mother - she's nothing like cold water. Nothing like warm water, either. She's dead.

He stands there, dumb and confused, until the water warms up. His hands move, of their own accord, bring him through the motions of washing. And they scrub, scrub at the blood that stains his skin a reddish brown.

Scrubs until there is nothing but a thin layer left, and Xander thinks that maybe this thin layer might be his skin.

He stares at his hand. The hand that is holding the soap had held his mother's hand, had let it slip.

He hates his father.

Scrubs at his body until he's numb and the water's cold. It wakes him up, better than an alarm clock.

He has school.

He turns the water off, stands in the shower until he hears his father's footsteps on the stairs, scrambles out of the shower. Ignoring the pile of bloodied clothing on the floor, he snatches up a towel and makes a dash - naked - to his room. Slamming the door shut behind him, he turns the lock, prays his father wouldn't come knocking.

His hair is wet, and for a few seconds he stands there, holding the towel in the hand that had held his mother's, water dripping from his hair, and wondering what it is that he's supposed to be doing. He almost laughs, dries himself and somehow manages to clothe himself. There's a whole chunk of time missing, but Xander doesn't dwell on it.

He has school.

He grabs his backpack - heavy with books he has yet to crack open - from where he'd carelessly flung it to the floor the night before. He won't be turning in completed work today. He doubts that he can get away with using the excuse that he'd held his mother's hand until she died, even though it's true. No teacher will buy that.

He'll take the F's. May never do homework again, because it'll remind him of his mother, of her blue lips, of the way her eyes had widened with pain, and then dulled as she'd passed from this life.

He'll take his father's fists, a belt to his backside, when he gets home. Maybe his mother's body will be gone by then. Maybe his father will be too far inside of a bottle of cheap whiskey to notice when Xander comes home, and Xander will be able to slip up the stairs without the man even seeing him.

He doubts it, but closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and unlocks his door, peeks into the hallway and scurries out when he doesn't see his father. Keeps his eyes focused straight ahead as he makes his way down the stairs. Grabs a pop-tart from the cupboard, without looking into the living room, and hurries out the front door, closing it tight behind him.

He breathes easier outside, though the sun's too bright, and the birds are too cheerful. Xander ignores both of them, skateboards to school, and tries to push the images of his dead mother from his mind.

His stomach clenches when he reaches the school and sees Willow. She's smiling, talking animatedly to Buffy, and Xander doesn't feel like talking to either of them right now. He ducks his head, tucks his skateboard close to his side, and hurries into the building, hoping to get lost in the throng of students so that he won't have to talk.

He forgets about his pop-tart. He's not hungry. Ignores the raised eyebrows and the tsks from the teachers when they ask for his homework and he shrugs. He can't even muster a smile, or a smart remark for them, and somehow that makes things worse.

"Hey, Xander, wait up," Buffy's voice is much too bright, and Xander bites his tongue, turns and forces a smile that he doesn't feel to his lips.

Buffy slings an arm around him, and Xander tries not to flinch, tries not to shrug her off. Right now, he wants to be alone. Wants to stop thinking, non-stop, about his dead mother's eyes, staring at him, about the way the blood had formed little bubbles when it had reached her lips, about the way his father had shot her, twice, and then walked away, leaving Xander to try to keep her alive, threatening to kill him if he called the police, if he said anything, if he left her side, and then tearing the phone out of the wall for good measure.

"Have you been listening to a word that I've said?" Buffy asks, and Xander blinks down at her, frowns, because, truthfully, he hasn't been listening, but he knows better than to admit that aloud. He still an ounce of self-preservation left in his body.

"You haven't, have you?" Buffy accuses him, and smacks him on the arm.

It hurts, even when she's pulling her punches and trying to be gentle. Slayer strength and all that. Xander offers her a sheepish grin, the best that he can muster right now, and rubs at his sore arm.

"What's wrong?" Buffy asks, suddenly sober.

"Nothing," other than the fact that my father murdered my mother and I wonder if her body will still be on the living room floor when I get home tonight.

"Then how come you've been avoiding me and Willow?" Buffy gives him a sidelong glance, and Xander wishes that he'd stayed home, risked his father's wrath, sat with his dead mother's body so that she wouldn't be alone.

Xander pulls a hand through his hair and shrugs. "Been busy."

Buffy sighs. "Fine, if you don't want to talk to me, at least talk to Willow, or Giles."

The thought of talking to Giles makes Xander feel ill and he almost turns and runs, but Buffy's got a pretty tight grip on him. He doubts that he'd get very far in any case. Running, right now, is not an option. Just like it hadn't been an option last night.

"Xander, you know you can trust us, right?" Buffy asks.

Xander nods, because it's expected. This, what's weighing on his heart, isn't about trust. He can't make himself say the words that have been running through his mind all day long, like a record stuck on repeat - my mother is dead and my father killed her.

Even though he witnessed the event firsthand, he's still having a hard time believing it. There's a very hopeful part of him that believes his mother will still be alive when he gets home after school. That, even though she's never really done this, she'll be in an apron, making dinner for him and his father. A regular Beaver Cleaver moment.

"Well, when you're ready to talk, I'll be here," Buffy assures him, squeezes him in a sideways hug that makes it hard for him to breathe.

How he makes it through the rest of the day is a mystery to him, because he doesn't remember what happened after Buffy hugged him and released him so that he could go to his afternoon English class. When the final bell rings, signaling the end of the day, it feels like he's being pulled out of a black pit of emptiness, the feel of his mother's dead hand soft and stiff, falling from his own as it had earlier that morning.

Xander blinks, and finds a very concerned Willow staring into his eyes as though she's trying to see into his mind. He seriously hopes that she can't. His mind, right now, is filled with blood and death and the sound of his father's footfalls heavy on the stairs, the sound of gunshots reverberating through his skull.

"Xander?" Willow's voice is soft and filled with worry. It makes Xander's gut clench, makes him want to run away and never come back.

"What's wrong?"

Though he's only heard that question twice today, Xander's sick of it. Sick of the question. Sick of his friends. Sick of feeling his dead mother's eyes staring at him, her hand slipping, dead, from his grip.

"Nothing," Xander says through clenched teeth. He swings his backpack from the back of his chair, nearly hitting Willow with it, and winces slightly at the resultant squawk.

"I'm fine, Willow," he says, not daring to look into her eyes, because he knows that she'll see the truth there. That he isn't fine, and may never be fine again.

"Did your father...is Tony, you know?" Willow whispers so that only he can hear, and he closes his eyes, presses the tips of his fingers to his eyelids.

If only it was that simple, he thinks. Is Tony hitting him again? Yeah. He'd never really stopped hitting him, even after Xander had been possessed by the hyena.

"Willow, I'm fine," Xander insists, his tone pleading.

She backs away then, gives him some space, and he stands, sways a little on his feet. Not sleeping last night hadn't done him any good, but he couldn't have left his mother, not like that. She might not have been the best mother in the world, but she didn't deserve to die alone, in the middle of her living room floor without someone to hold her hand.

"Fine," Willow says, her tone a little too light. Xander's not fooled by it. He knows that she's backing off, for now, but that she's biding her time, and she won't let this drop.

Somehow, he makes it through the rest of the day, his movements and actions reminding him of zombies, or the recently risen undead.

He doesn't think. Just follows the movements of the other students whenever the bell rings. He doesn't even know if he's made it to his own classes, or just dropped into the middle of some random class. No one says anything, and whenever homework is collected, he pretends to look for it, only to come up empty. It works. No one questions him, and he makes it through to the last bell without a hitch.

He makes excuses to Giles and the girls; ignores Angel who appears to be brooding about something, which is the norm, though him being out during the day isn't very much of the norm, and Xander wonders if he could slip down to the sewers that Angel uses to hide away from the daylight whenever the vampire needs to make a daytime appearance.

He wants to disappear, lose himself, maybe forget what he's seen.

Instead, he heads home. To his father, to his dead mother and her blood.

Angel frowns as he watches the boy, Xander, take his leave. There's something wrong, but he can't quite put his finger on it. Curiosity, rather than love or like for the boy, is what has him offering to check on Xander after patrol that night.

The girls, though they try to hide it, are worried. That, more than anything else, is what convinces Angel that checking on the boy is the right thing to do. It has nothing, of course, to do with feelings or the not-visions-dreams, whatever, that have been plaguing him lately. All involving Xander. All involving him. All involving him and Xander.

He's not surprised when Buffy and Willow balk at the offer, at first, but he's not easily dissuaded and he's got centuries on the kids. He'll be damned (probably literally) if he doesn't do what his conscience is telling him to do - check on the boy.

He can tell the girls are worried about their friend, even if Giles seems to be much more interested in the latest demon they're up against, oblivious to the girls' distress, and Xander's earlier pallor, which had nearly been paler than Angel's. The dark circles, and dullness to the boy's eyes spoke of something that Angel is well acquainted with - guilt and death, and something else that Angel had seen in the boy's eyes many times before - humiliation and defeat.

Something's happened. Angel is going to find out just what that is.

Xander knows he's in trouble minute he sets foot inside the front door. A hand clamps around his forearm, and, before he can even open his mouth to protest, not that it'd do him any good, he's being hauled into the living room and shoved to his knees.

There's a bucket sitting there, smack dab in the middle of the room, next to a drying pool of his mother's blood that Xander's been forced to kneel in. It's clear, even before his father's command, that he's meant to clean it up. His mother's body is gone, though Xander can see the ghost of her lying there. Pale skin, blue lips, eyes open, glassy and watching him. He shivers, and swallows the sudden lump that forms in his throat, chokes on a sob.

"Don't even think about eating dinner 'til this mess is cleaned up," Tony, Xander's been calling his father that, at least in his head, for years now, says and he pulls Xander's backpack away from him, tosses it onto the couch. Looks like he's not going to get his homework done tonight either.

"You hear me?" Tony emphasizes the question with a cuff to the head that makes Xander see stars.

"Yes, sir," he manages, somehow, to get the words out between numb lips and wonders why his father didn't kill him last night, why he doesn't kill him now.

"Not a speck of blood," Tony says, emphasizing the point by jabbing a finger in Xander's chest before he turns and walks away.

Xander's happy to be left alone with his task, though there's so much blood, and he has no idea where to begin. For a moment he wavers, dizzy and overly warm, though his hands are ice cold.

He plunges a hand into the water, soaking the sleeve of his shirt, splashing warm, sudsy water over the edge of the bucket. There's a sponge, and he grabs it, but it feels foreign in his hand, and he stares at it for several seconds before it registers with him what it is and what he's got to do with it.

He wrings out the sponge and turns toward the blood. An image of his mother as she'd been just before she took her last breath is superimposed over it. She'd smiled at him, and Xander wonders if she'd seen that light that he'd heard of - the one at the end of the tunnel that waited for those who died.

The blood seems to take on a life of its own as Xander scrubs at it. The sudsy water becomes red far quicker than he thought it would, the knees of Xander's jeans are wet with the bloody water, and he wonders if his hands will ever come clean again.

He loses track of time. The room grows dark, the water cold. And still, Xander scrubs, hands and knees numb. He doesn't think, works at getting the stain of his mother out of the living room floor, the memory of her taking her last breaths out of his mind.

The sun sets, and Xander's eyelids start to droop, but he doesn't let go of the sponge, because his mother's blood is still there, right in front of him, screaming at him, begging him not to leave, not to forget. He can't, even if he wants to.

A light switch is flicked, and the living room is bathed in harsh light that makes the blood, now nothing more than a dark, wet stain on the carpeting, look like one of the monsters in Giles' books. A shadow falls across him, shrouds his mother's blood in an inky darkness that chases the demons away, only to give room for other demons more powerful than those his mother's death has left him with.

A heavy hand lands on his shoulder, but Xander continues working at the blood, because it's still there; he can see it even when he closes his eyes. And it's that blood, the stuff that he can see on the back of his eyelids that refuses to come out of the worn carpet.

It'll never come out, he thinks, and he shrugs the hand off, because it's hampering his movements. He'll never get all of it out if he doesn't use both of his hands.

The slap, when it comes, is completely unexpected and sends Xander reeling sideways. The sponge falls from fingers that no longer feel, and it takes a minute, maybe longer, for him to understand what happened, to see his father's angry face poised above his own, lips moving, no sound coming out of them.

He's hot, and the room is spinning, and his father looks like he's going to explode.

Xander wonders if it'll hurt when it happens. If he'll feel any pain. If he'll linger long, like his mother had - hours upon hours of ragged, rattled breathing before death had finally, finally claimed her - or if he'll just die. If his father will shoot him in the head, make it quick and painless, or if he'll shoot him in the stomach and watch Xander die, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, glowing ember growing dull as Xander's body slowly loses the battle to live.

He smiles, hoping for a quick end so that he can join his mother on the other side. Maybe he'll be able to reunite with Jesse, and the puppy that he'd had when he was two or three years old before it ran out in the street and was hit by a car.

It's hard to breathe, and the world tilts suddenly, the light fades in and out, and his father's breath is a vice around his neck, choking him, drowning him in the stench of cheap beer and tobacco. His stomach lurches, and he tries to put his feet underneath him as he's hauled up off of his knees, but they don't want to cooperate.

There's the sound of an explosion, somewhere outside, inside, and Xander thinks, This is it. I'm dead, though he feels nothing, and the hand holding him up is suddenly gone, leaving him swaying on his feet and then crashing to his knees.

His head spins, and when he lifts his head, he sees, not his father, but the face of an angel, and, smiling, he welcomes death. Death may have the face of an angel, but it has the heart of a killer, the teeth of one too. Makes Xander think of the killer clown in that Stephen King film, It.

What was his name? Penny something. Pennywise? Penny...pennies taste like copper, taste like blood. Blood, blood, blood from pennies.

Xander hates clowns, hates that his head feels disconnected from the rest of his body, and that he's clearly still alive. That he can't feel the blood pumping through his veins, pouring out of his body, staining the floor, and that his father looks like the Angel of Death, with sharp, pointy teeth. That it reminds him of a clown and pennies that taste like blood.

His schoolbag is on the couch, and he watches it disappear as he's dragged out of the living room and shoved into a chair. He nearly topples over, but a strong hand steadies him, and his not-father's lips continue to move, but Xander can't hear any sound over the beating of his own heart.

A plate appears in front of him, out of nowhere, and Xander stares at it, trying to make sense of where it came from, and what it's doing there, what his not-father-Angel-of-Death wants from him. His hands shake when he moves them.

"Eat." It's a command, though it's spoken gently.

A sandwich is shoved into his blood covered hands, and Xander flinches away. He wants to argue that he can't eat dinner yet. There's still blood on the floor. It's everywhere, and it's calling to him.

"Xander."

His father never calls him Xander, but then again, his father's never appeared to him as an Angel of Death before either. Has never treated him with kindness.

"Xander, look at me."

Xander frowns, and looks from the sandwich, to the face, and then over to the living room where his mother's blood waits for him to return. It's calling to him, without words, without voice .

The bucket's lying on its side, the sponge is just inside of it, pink with his mother's water-diluted blood, and Xander's heart sinks. He moves to return to the living room, to the task his father set for him. To the lingering ghost of his mother and her smile.

Cold hands frame his face, and eyes that do not belong to his father, brown with gold flecks, stare back at him. Xander blinks in confusion, stomach roiling as he looks at the sandwich, at his fingers, pruned and pale pink from the bloody water.

He's shaking, and the person holding him isn't his father. Would never have been his father, because, even when he'd been little, his father had never held him.

"Wha-" is all that makes it out of his mouth, and he drops the sandwich, eyes wide and focused on the face before him, really seeing it for the first time. It's Angel, not an angel, and how did Angel get into his house? Where is Xander's father? Why is Angel looking at him like that? Like there's something wrong with him.

"Xander, you need to eat," Angel says, and Xander shakes his head.

"Didn't finish," he says, voice small and broken. He wrenches out of Angel's grip, turns back toward the living room. "Can't eat until the blood's gone."

"I'm getting you out of here," Angel mutters.

Before Xander can protest, he's being lifted up in muscular arms, and his face is pressed against a muscular chest, and there's little he can do to get himself out of said arms, and away from said chest. It's more than a little unnerving, especially when his eyelids start to droop, but not before he catches a glimpse of his father, crammed into a far corner of the kitchen, body twisted in an awkward position. Xander shivers, hopes that his father's not dead, though why he hopes that is beyond him.

"So strong," Xander mutters. He pats the chest that's holding him, and then he loses consciousness, a picture of his mother's smiling face the last thing that he sees as he's carried across the threshold of his childhood home and out into the darkness of Sunnydale.

Angel curses himself for acting rashly. He doesn't do that kind of thing. Doesn't rush in where, no pun intended, angels fear to tread. But when he'd seen, through the front window to Xander's home, what the boy's father intended to do to him, it was like he'd stopped thinking, and he reacted, like a teenager moved by hormones, rather than a centuries old vampire.

"Foolish," he chastises himself and tries not to focus on the warmth that's coming from the boy's body, or how it seeps in past the thin layer of his shirt, warming him.

He's not had human companionship for more years than he's willing to count. Had denied himself friendship of any sort - penance for the sins the gypsy's curse had made him relive - and it's a foreign concept now, though he's drawn to the small band of humans that the prophecy had led him to - the blonde slayer and her friends.

Xander's hands clutch at Angel's shirt, fingernails crusted with blood dig into the soft fabric, and tug at it. Angel is momentarily lost in the scent of blood, and sugar, and chocolate, and exhaustion that clings to the boy, knows that he's got to get Xander somewhere safe - from his father (though the man's dead - broken neck)...from the memory of the blood in the living room...from himself.

But his feet take him along a familiar path, completely usurping the authority of his mind which tells him to bring the boy to Giles' or Buffy's place, and he's stepping across the threshold to his own home before he fully realizes where it is that he's taken Xander. Angel's place has little by way of furniture, and he knows that he'll need to purchase a bed, a TV, a bigger refrigerator, maybe even a real dining room set, if he's going to keep the boy.

Xander stirs, brown eyes more alert than they were when Angel had first found him. He's watching him through thick eyelashes, mouth turned downward in a slight frown. His fingers are still gripping Angel's shirt, though, and he does nothing to free himself.

Angel knows that he should say something, and even opens his mouth to do so, but words don't come, and Xander's eyes are speaking loud enough for the both of them, conveying thanks, shame, hope, gratitude, and exhaustion.

"Sleep," Angel whispers, and he brushes his lips over the boy's forehead. It's cool and clammy, and Xander trembles, but his frown falters into a half smile, and his fingers loosen their death grip on Angel's shirt, allowing him to lower the boy to the couch. The bed would be better, and after only a moment's hesitation, he changes course, striding toward his bedroom with a confused Xander in his arms.

"Wh -I..." the boy's blush is endearing, but the flush of shame, and the way that his eyes seem to shutter, make Angel feel guilty, though he's got nothing to feel guilty for.

"Relax," Angel says. "You're going to sleep in here tonight, I'll take the couch. We'll figure out the rest tomorrow."

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback would be greatly appreciated. Mahalo


End file.
